Startup Europe Week – What we accomplished!

We made it! The biggest entrepreneurship event ever hosted in Europe has a name – Startup Europe Week. Without bragging too much (!!!), we are extremely proud of what we accomplished during SEW and we’d love to share with you in this post some of the results.

The impact

For those who have followed us, you already know the “big data”: SEW hosted events in 200+ cities in 40+ countries with the amazing support of 400+ co-organizers. But specifically, some of the mind-boggling data came from participants all over Europe:

But beyond the big numbers, as a team, we felt we built something that can truly plant the seed for a big change in the entrepreneurship scenario in Europe. With the great support from the European Commission and Startup Europe team, we were able to start influencing not only policy makers at the European level but primarily at the regions, where business gets done.

The community

From the very beginning, we aimed high, focusing on a very simple idea: to bring attention to the “unsexy” (but fundamental) aspects involving entrepreneurship (check here and here our motivation for building SEW). Not only celebrating entrepreneurs, but informing them about the local resources they already have available to build a business in their own communities. That’s it.

With this simple idea, we were able to amass significant support from local regional authorities that really wanted to promote their great initiatives, talking directly to entrepreneurs. So, from Liberec to Porto, from Rome to London, SEW put a spotlight on the ones actively engaging with their local communities.

The results speak from themselves, with massive participation, and most importantly, engagement across cities, as expressed by some of our amazing co-organizers:

– “Great networking with successfully connected people. We know of 4 projects that are working together with regional mentors and public funding programs thanks to their participation in our SEW event (Leipzig).”

– “A very complete overview of local support to Startups (Namur).”

– “All of public and private regional players were at the events. A lot of networking opportunities for startuppers (Cosenza).”

– “Most of the people and organization had never known how they can communicate and work together. Most of them have started doing it (Varna).”

– “People felt to be part of an european event, they felt more european (Assemini).”

– “People were delighted to attend an event where public authorities, top executives, journalist and entrepreneurs all shared the floor to provide insights about female tech entrepreneurship promotion (Madrid).”

– “The cultivation of a new culture. The first event local that entrepreneurs shared their personal business challenges. They were passionate and glad to have this opportunity. Finally the participants are now friends and share thoughts and problems (Alexandroupoli).”

– “It was the first time in our region that organisations had to make elevator pitches to explain in 5 minutes what they could offer to the entrepreneur audience. It ended up being a very dynamic event (Zaragoza).”

– “The experience (pitch in 3′) and the 1-to-1 contact with local organisations (chamber of commerce, region, business angels…) and entrepreneurs : direct hands-on feedback about their projects and what further steps to take (Saint Quentin).”

– “The information, the energy, the atmosphere, the get together (Sofia).”

– “The event gathered entrepreneurs, startups, local & regional authorities and startup & business support organizations at one place. People met each other, started a dialogue, discussed common problems (Ruse).”

– “New entrepreneurs who usually don’t attend networking events showed up, which is very positive for the ecosystem (Marseille).”

The future

As the founding team of Startup Europe Week we are committed to bring SEW again in 2017, stronger and even more impactful. We are still planning the next steps and how it will become a reality, but rest assure it will be awesome!